Well, we managed to get into court by 10:40 this morning.. And we didn’t go out much either.. only a 5 minute comfort break for one of the barristers (which took 40 minutes) just before lunch.

Anyway, we’ve (probably) got through all the evidence now. Assuming that the debate the barristers were going to have after we left doesn’t mean that we have another witness to hear we should get on to the set of summing up speeches from the barristers followed by a speech by the judge before we go out to decide.

The light is at the end of the tunnel!

Well, we were asked to get to the court by 09:40 so as to be in court by 09:45 for an early start.

Well, We were all there.. There was a phone call.. “Don’t come down, we’ll phone you when we’re ready.” Fifty minutes later, at about half ten we got a phone call to go down stairs.. which we all did. We sat down there in the jury waiting room for about 5 minutes until the court usher came in and told us to not bother and go back upstairs again.. which we did.

We finally got into court at about 11:10. By 12:10 we were out and off for the rest of the day as the judge had other business to attend to.

So, having been released for the rest of the day i wandered back to the department via Felson’s baguette shop. As I entered the department I bumped into Jen, one of the 3rd year undergrads who’d done strange things to thier hair for Red Nose Day. She told me that the other person, Cian (pronounced K-ee-an) was up in the UG computer room and that I REALLY should see his hair.. so I did.

His hair was a sight to see. Half the left side of his head was shaven, the right dyed red. The left side of the beard was still there but the right was shaven. Jen and Cian, together, have managed to raise 1300 pounds in sponsorship. Quite a good sum, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Whilst up in the UG computer room one of the other 3rd years around at the time with whom I’ve been befriend at happy hour came up and asked if I was going downstairs for lunch. I was, so we both went outside into the lovely warm sunshine. Others joined us. T’was a pleasant lunch break.

The afternoon was taken up with normal work things.. doing some of those more important things which have been hanging around while I’ve been doing other things.

This evening I’ve cooked the nice Sainsbury’s Ultimate Cumberland Chipolata sausages I didn’t use over the weekend, eating half of their number along with peas and the remaining batch of the miniture new potatos I’d bought on Sunday. Yummy.

Later I watched Enterprise which was a little dull (as usual) and very derivative (as usual). Indeed, it was almost a re-run of the old Next Generation episode called Damok. (If you’re wondering, I’ve got about 5 Star Trek videos and Damok is one of the episodes on one of them which I didn’t buy it for. I don’t know all the names of all the episodes. I’m not quiet that sad. ;-))

Anyway, 09:55 start at court tomorrow, hopefully. So, bed soon.

With all the excitement of Alec arriving, I forgot to mention that Mat (nobby, sleipnir_) turned up just after Em & Jerry arrived and we all had a nice chat.

Laura thought Mat was a big hit too.

Well, Friday was spent mostly waiting in a waiting room. Or at least it felt that way. In fact, due to the judge having other work to do we sat waiting ’til 12:45 before being called down to the court for a half hour stint before lunch.

The afternoon’s proceedings went on and on. It finally ended at about 4:30.

Of course, this meant that I had to rush back to the dept. to pick up my stuff and then cycle straight home to be ready for Em, Jerry and little Laura’s arrival. They arrived just before 6pm and this is when the enjoyable but exhausting weekend began.

The last couple of days have become a daze full of pretty happy, chattering toddler, walks in the sunshine and an evening with a full house containing not only a toddler but a group of adults and a 4 year old… Tom, Shona and little Tanaqui came around and visited… we had a lovely chinese takeaway buffet.

So, it’s Sunday, Em, Jerry and Laura have all gone, I’ve not done the washing up but other things have been cleared up and now Alec’s popped in..

A good weekend, I call it.

What can I say?

Well, as usual, there was lots of waiting. At least the judge appologised saying that in this case there had been rather more points of law raised than is usual which meant that we had to go out of the court room a great deal.

I got a question passed to the judge for him to ask the witness.. which he duly did.

This evening I’ve gone to Sainsbury’s to buy extra groceries ready for Em, Jerry (_jander_) and little Laura’s visit. I’ve also dysoned the whole house, done all the washing up and set up the sofabed in bed mode and made it.

Now I can just sit back and relax a bit before bedtime. I’ve currently got Gary Numan & the Tubeway Army’s live album “Living Ornaments’79” on the hifi whilst my video records Buffy and Angel for viewing after my visitors leave on Sunday.

Lots and lots of time was wasted today sitting in the room outside the court waiting for barristers to slug it out on points of law.

In fact, so far it’s been on average about 1.5 hours per day we’ve had to wait there for this to happen. You can see why court cases overrun. As far as this one goes, it’s taken about a day to get through the first defence part and there are 5 in total.. I guess there’s at least 5 more days to go then.

Back to court at 10am again tomorrow.. I doubt we’ll get into the jury box ’til 11 though.

Not much to say really other than at last we’ve got to the end of the prosecution’s part and are now on the defence side.

I guess this trial will go on and on and on….

Oh well, back into the court room at 10am again tomorrow.

Well, the weekend was nothing really special.

Saturday was taken up buying some new towels and an umbrella. Exciting, eh? Well, I also did the weekly shopping. I also got to watch “The Sky at Night” and spent the evening watching “Dirty Harry” on DVD.

Sunday was spent clearing up the spare room in preparation for Em and Jerry’s visit on Friday. I also tested that the new bed linen would fit the new sofa bed.. which it did.

The afternoon included watching the Grand Prix which was better than last year’s but probably only due to Ferrari’s ineptitude rather than the changes to the rules.

Late in the evening Alec dropped around to pick up a tape of Buffy & Angel from the Thursday he missed due to flying out to Denver. We had a good chat and mugs of tea. Well, on Alec’s part it was more of a whisper than a chat has he has a rather nasty case of larengitis.

Today has not been such an eventful day in court. We have almost got through to the end of the case for the prosecution. It was mostly statements being read and police officers giving evidence.

OK.. all I will say about today is that I learnt one big lesson:-

If ever something illegal happens, look the other way and don’t become a witness!

One of the witnesses today who was being as helpful as possible and detailing precisely what he did see, what he didn’t see and what he wasn’t sure about was attacked by one of the defence lawyers who tried to discredit his whole evidence because the poor person got one thing mixed up. To me this was just not right and put me off every trying to help in future. It’s fine to question and probe the validity of a witness’ statement and evidence but not to this degree when it was was obvious he was trying his best to help. I was appalled.